


Dead Drop (Alive)

by jenna_thorn



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 18:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16289435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: So maybe the Avengers can't know Phil's alive. But Delta predates the Avengers.Set between Avengers and the pilot of Agents of Shield.





	Dead Drop (Alive)

Clint propped his hip against the flimsy cubicle wall and tipped his takeaway cup toward Natasha. She didn't look up from the laptop. "You're late," he said.

"I'm busy," she answered, still staring narrow eyed at the monitor. 

He glanced around, suddenly nervous. She'd been playing perfect employee for weeks now. Skipping a so-called mandatory meeting was his gig. "Is this an 'Uh Oh' kind of busy or ...?"

"Not yet."

He rubbed the back of his neck, willing the hairs to go back down. "Okay, let me know when we have a target and what weather to pack for."

"Might not." 

His heart stopped. "You, uh, you going to go solo?" She had refused to hear any kind of apology even while frog-marching him to the only SHIELD approved therapist who'd agreed to see him. He blinked. She was staring at him. No, that was a glare; she was glaring at him. "Um...."

She rolled her eyes and he sighed. "Let me be explicit. Again." She stared at him silently until he blushed and dropped his gaze to the desk, his hands, anywhere but her face.

"Okay, okay, I get it. Sorry. Just... I've been in meetings all day and ... ." There was always a seat empty to either side of him, even when agents were standing along the walls. 

Her unblinking focus went back to the laptop. "They're wrong."

"Not entirely."

"Clint."

"I'm just saying there's bits of fletching still in MedBay."

"No, there isn't." 

"Metaphorical."

"Poetic, but still wrong."

"Can we not fight about this?"

"What does Doctor Lisseuse say?"

"Fuck you."

"I doubt that." She leaned back in the chair and rubbed her nose. "C'mere. What do your elf eyes see?"

"Stark's head on a pike. One of the rusty Orcish ones," he grumbled, but he stepped around to see the screen. "Okay, it's a sat image." He leaned in. "No, it's Google maps." She alt-tabbed between screens, clicking to the email set up five years before. He snorted. "I can't believe you kept that screenname."

"I wanted to keep the Neopets account." The open email was from a burner account. It had a string of gibberish as the sender and no subject line and only a latitude and longitude set as the body. She clicked back to the image of North Africa.

"Egypt. Who's sending us to Egypt?"

"I don't know." She logged out and closed the laptop. "But I have a sudden yen for a hot dog."

\--00--

The dead drop P.O. box in Schaumburg yielded a post card postmarked Laredo the month before. The back had "Wish you were here" in all block caps and the front the Pyramid of Giza. Clint carried it by the edges to where Natasha sat in the rental. 

"I don't get it," he said as he dropped into the passenger seat. "No, not that. Denial. Not subtle. But these aren't SHIELD drop boxes. He doesn't want Fury to know?"

"He doesn't want Fury to know that we know."

"Fuck." He leaned back against the head rest and closed his eyes. "So it's either a SHIELD secret to hide from the WSC or Stark or .. I hate this twisty shit." 

"Which is why you have me. You're the straight shooter." She started the car and merged into a space in traffic that wasn't actually big enough for the rental.

"Wrong way. You dragged me through O'Hare; we're going to Superdawg."

"Really?"

"I could hold out for Kuby's."

"Superdawg it is." 

\---000---

Clint rolled his neck as Davidson raised the lights and agents filed out of the room. Not only were one in ten agents still shying away from him, but now Fury was dragging him into security briefings. Once, he'd have been thrilled to have been asked to contribute his ideas to improving security. Now that he'd broken it, it felt more like penance. Some kid he couldn't name rounded the table the long way around to avoid passing near him, then shied so hard at the door that he slapped the wall. Clint rolled his eyes and followed. Natasha matched his pace as he entered the hallway. "Mission?"

"Nope!" she said so cheerfully that all his internal alarms went off at once. "Shopping trip." He didn't react, he knew the hall was empty and the only person within possible eavesdropping distance was the skittish new recruit. 

"And you need a bodyguard."

"Don't be silly. I need you to carry my bags."

He thought for a moment and realized it wasn't like he was going to say no. "'Kay. Do I need a jacket?" He hoped not. He'd just spent a week somewhere classified but way too close to the Arctic Circle and his toes still felt cold. 

"Dunno yet. Where's the jogging path you hate most in the world?" 

He didn't break stride as he cast his mind back over years of missions for a jogging path. Maybe the hotel in Miami with the rooftop workout area or ... . "Crap. Ah Ph...Fuck." He stopped walking in order to move to one wall and bang his head against it. Natasha waited. "Book us to LAX, please. When do we leave?" 

"Tuesday," she called over her shoulder as she walked away.

\---000---

Clint jogged past where Natasha sat at the Grand Avenue stop, under the Green metro line. Jogging the first week of November was a hell of a lot better than the last week of August but the path still ran beside a busy road and under a commuter rail and in fucking El Segundo. He reached Mariposa and spun to head south again. He spotted and dismissed a pair of joggers, three students and a woman wrestling with a car seat but kept aware of a woman in jeans and a man with his arm in a sling in the Hilton parking lot. Lots of toys would fit in a sling, and a cast made for a fun bludgeon all by itself. The woman joined Natasha as the stop and he slowed to a walk. "May?" he asked. "What the hell?"

"She insisted on tagging along," Phil said, stepping out from the landscaping at the edge of the parking lot. He wiggled the fingers in the sling. "C'mon, we're in 202." May nodded infinitesimally then sat on the concrete bench at the opposite end from where Natasha was carefully placing a bookmark in her paperback. 

Carefully, maybe even a little slowly, Natasha slid the book into her bag, then rose and headed for the back entrance of the hotel which had already swallowed Coulson.

Clint, as he had for years, as he always would, followed them.


End file.
